Reciprocal Discovery Bill Becomes Less Reciprocal

I reported earlier about proposed legislation that would require both prosecutors and defense lawyers to provide discovery in advance of trial in criminal cases. Well, now the bill is going in a surprising direction and the changes have even more surprising origins:

At the hearing before the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee on Tuesday of this week, Rep. Moody laid out a version of the discovery bill that wouldn’t require the defense to make any disclosures. Shannon Edwards of TDCAA (the prosecutors’ association), in a comment on the Grits coverage of this saga confirmed that the prosecutors’ association was behind this change. Hard to imagine, but I guess we’ll see.